"Tuesday what?" I say.
"Roofer. I'll call him."
"You know the roofer too?"
"Different favor," Silas says.
I look between them.
There is an entire social ecosystem in Silver Ridge that operates on favors, informal agreements, and handshake understandings. I'm only beginning to understand the surface of it. I have been here for a few months and I suspect it will take three years to fully map.
I add it to the notebook in my head.
Laney comes through the barn door shaking rain off her hat and stops when she sees the three of us looking at the roof. She follows our gaze up to the holes. A small sound escapes her that is not quite a word.
"Tuesday," Remy tells her.
"Silas's roofer or yours?"
"Mine."
"Does this involve the county fair situation?"
"I'd rather not—"
"Remy."
"It's handled," he says with great dignity. "The roof will be fixed by Wednesday."
Laney looks at the buckets. Looks at the holes. Looks at me with the exhausted expression of a woman who has been managing ranch crises since before noon and has arrived at the end of her available patience for new information.
"Wednesday," she says.
"Wednesday," I confirm.
She puts her hat back on. "I need to check on Maisie."
"I'll come with you," I say.
We walk across the yard together through the drizzle, not talking, not needing to. The rain is soft now, the sky still heavybut no longer threatening, the ranch quiet in the exhausted way it gets after something hard has passed through it.
The yard is muddy, the access road visible from here in its impassable state, the lower field dark with standing water at the far end.
The ranch looks tired.
It also looks intact.
Those two things existing simultaneously feel important in a way I want to think about later when I have the energy to think properly.
Laney slows beside me.
I look at her profile in the gray afternoon light. The tiredness sitting on her face honestly. Not managed. Not performed. The mud on her jaw she hasn't noticed. The way she's been holding herself together since noon with the quiet fierce competence that is the most essentially her thing about her.
"Hey," I say quietly.
She looks at me.
"You okay?"
